goroesi'r cryf
by winterbranwen
Summary: Raven is twelve when she first kills a man. Qrow asks later, when they lay beneath the stars, what it had felt like. "I felt strong."


_I don't buy that Raven and Qrow weren't close as children.  
'Were we ever?' my ass. There's no way that these two, who had literally nothing but each other, didn't grow up completely depending on one another and feeling some sort of familial bond. I did, however, want to touch on what may have started separating the two and put them on very different paths.  
__

She's only twelve when the Tribe leader sentences a man to death and shoves a knife into her hand. The hilt was rough, wooden, cheaply made and splintered as she held it in her palm. The blade curved, misshapen steel, rusted over, the blood of those before him chipping off and crumbling to the dirt. Looking up at the man, who had been sentenced to death for a reason unknown to her, she knew it would be a painful death. She wondered what he had done to warrant such a dishonor, a young, inexperienced girl taking his life.

"Well?"

The Tribe Leader, her eyes aflame, her own weapon ready in her clenched fists, stares down at Raven. Swallowing the quiver in her throat, Raven looks finally to Qrow. There's a horrid curl of pride in the pit of her stomach. They would have never asked this of _him_. This was a test, they were pushing her, testing the limits of their charge.

Her eyes move back to the Tribe leader. Raven, steel in her veins and steel in hand, nods and turns to the man. It's over so quickly that she hardly recognizes the way the body goes limp beneath her hands, or how the blade had cut so easily. It was quite a gruesome death and as he fell, his hand caught her wrist. The man looked his killer in the eye and Raven, a child fulfilling the duty of a woman thrice her age, felt a chill course through her.

There was an uproar around her, the men and women of the tribe chanting for her. The gentleness of the tribe leader's hand on her shoulder jerks her from the reverie, forces her to look away from the body bleeding out before her to the woman's face. Those burning eyes bore into hers and she nodded.

"You've done well, Raven."

Qrow is forgotten in the crowd, his eyes still locked onto the body, hands clenched into fists at his side. When Raven finds him in the throng of bandits, he is ashen, his face betraying the celebratory mood of the others.

Again, an emotion Raven is not entirely proud of tugs within her. Guilt, is it? But then, for what? She had not felt for the man she had cut down. She had been given instructions, a command, she had dared not disobey. For fear of retaliation or disappointing the tribe, she wasn't quite sure. It was done, anyway, and the blood drying on her fingers would be washed away. This man's life would be forgotten, his cowardice and dishonorable crimes would fade and Raven would live on.

Qrow asked later, when they lay beneath the stars, what it had felt like.

"I felt strong." She had said, voice quiet, her unblinking eyes turning to the fire that roared in the center of camp.

Qrow nodded. He knew the value of strength just as she did. It allowed you to survive, to gather up every bit of willpower you had and to push on- no matter who or what stood before you. Looking towards his sister, he saw something growing within her. Maybe it was strength- but he saw something in her he had never seen, he felt fear for and of her. Of what she had done, of what she would do.

"Qrow?" she asks, still not moving her eyes from the fire.

"Huh?"

Her voice shook just slightly, "I'll have to do it again, won't I?"

They both know the answer. He swallows the thickness in his throat, ignores the scathing voice in the back of his head that says, "Better her than you."

He hears her exhale a shuddering breath. "I can do it. The strong survive. I'll be strong." She answers her own question with a blind bravery Qrow finally recognizes as his sister.

She rolls over in her bag to look at him. The pair, born into nothing and with nothing but the other, stare.

"We'll be strong, together." She assures him, reaching out to hold his hand.

He grips onto it, firm, like an anchor and nods.

"Together."


End file.
